Gladstone gave an impatient and anxious look
at the clock. The hands pointed to ten minutes to midnight before this
man of eighty-three was on his legs to address a crowded, hot, jaded
assembly in a speech that would wind up one of the great stages in the
greatest controversy of his life.
[Sidenote: The opening.]
We who love and follow him hold our breaths, and our nervous anxiety
rises almost to terror. Can he stand the strain?--will he break down
from sheer physical fatigue and the exhaustion of long waiting? The
first few notes of the deep voice are reassuring. The opening sentences
also have that full roll which nearly always is inevitable proof that
the great swelling opening will carry him on to the end; and yet there
is anxiety. Those who know him well cannot help observing that there is
just a slight trace of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety in the voice
and manner. He has evidently been put out by the lateness of the hour to
which the speech has been postponed. There is beside him a vast mass of
notes, and then, before he reaches that, there is the long speech to
which he has just listened, many points of which it is impossible to
leave unnoticed.
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